Miguna was expected in Canada last weekend, wife says

Jane Miguna, the wife of banished opposition politician Miguna Miguna, has spoken out on her perturbation, which was brought about by the absence of information regarding her husband’s whereabouts on Tuesday.

For several days, Mrs Miguna was frantic with worry, since when the police failed to produce him at Milimani Law Courts as had been ordered.

Latching on information vacuum about Mr Miguna’s whereabouts, a section of Kenyans on social media speculated that he, probably, had been killed; a rumour which gave Jane an unparalleled scare.

She had been calling the case manager at the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi, but the official there wouldn’t tell her anything.

“From Sunday to yesterday, she was not even able to tell me if Miguna was dead or alive,” Jane said in an interview with Canadian site www.macleans.ca on Tuesday.

“That really worried me, because the commissioner was not even able to get information from the Kenyan government to assure her (commissioner) that they are holding him and he’s alive. Really, although she may have information but she is not giving it to me. At least somebody should be able to tell me, yes, he’s alive. But no. I was not told anything. They just say they are aware of the case and they are working on it,” said Jane.

Jane and Mr Miguna, who live in Richmond Hill, have been married for 16 years. They have three teenage children.

Jane didn’t want their children to worry, so she didn’t tell them about their father’s arrest, but she was afraid they would learn of it from social media.

They were expecting their father to return on the weekend.

“They are already asking why didn’t daddy come, and I am just telling them he has an engagement,” she said.

Miguna Miguna moved to Canada in 1988.

Jane Miguna alleges that her husband wears glasses because his eyes were permanently damaged by bright lights the police used on him during an alleged detention by retired President Daniel Moi.

After graduating from the University of Toronto and being called to the Ontario bar, Mr Miguna returned to Kenyan politics, working for opposition chief Raila Odinga. He split with him, wrote a tell-all book that caused a sensation in Kenya, then ended up as his ally again leading up to a disputed election this summer.

He was arrested after giving Mr Odinga an oath, in which the opposition leader took charge of a non-existent office in the Constitution.

Jane Miguna said he was “just being used as a scapegoat” by the ruling government.

Andreas Katsouris, a Canadian political consultant who was working for Odinga’s party when he was detained and expelled from the country in August, says Miguna was a political prisoner.

Katsouris called for Canada to speak about the case.

“To stay silent in the face of an ostensibly friendly government keeping a Canadian in detention illegally is a failure to stand up for the rights of Canadians when they need our government to speak for them.”

Mr Miguna was deported to Canada on Tuesday, February 6 via a KLM flight, which left Nairobi for Amsterdam at 11:59pm.

The government claims that the vocal opposition politician renounced Kenyan citizenship, when he adopted the Canadian one, and had not re-applied for reconsideration.

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